I was one of the doctors that led the 'Call on Your College' campaign which asked doctors to lobby their Royal Colleges to call a ballot of College Members asking if they oppose the Health Bill. Democracy in action! Up until this campaign (which I spearheaded) the Royal Colleges were actively working with the coalition on the Bill. Following our campaign many Royal Colleges listened to their members and came out in opposition - the RCPCH, the RC Radiologists, the RC Obs and Gynae, the RC Pathologists, the RC Psychiatrists and the RC GPs. Alas though it was too late to stop the Bill becoming law.

If only the Royal Colleges had listened to the huge anger in the medical profession and come out in opposition sooner!

In the interview with Prof Stephenson it says 'As the RCPCH president he was centrally involved in the medical community's (failed) efforts to thwart the health and social care bill...' - I have to add that the RCPCH only came out in opposition to the Bill once it balloted its members and 79% voted to oppose the Bill. The RCPCH saw the writing on the wall and came out in opposition. This only happened in the final weeks of the tortuous journey of the Bill. Up until that ballot of its members the RCPCH was actively engaged with the coalition in seeking to improve the Bill. The vast majority of doctors knew it wasn't possible to make the Bill acceptable and remove all the commercialising elements of the Bill.

We now have the Health and Social Care Act and those of us still fighting this privatising legislation will lobby for it to be repealed and seek to reverse all the damaging effects it will have on the NHS.

I haven't got a problem with stroke, neurology, trauma, cardiac emergencies patients going to a central unit with the appropriate experts available 24/7 to sort them out. It makes sense to get all stroke patients assessed and given the clot buster (if appropriate) and smaller hospitals haven't got enough specialist staff to cover round the clock and at week ends.

However, I have concerns that little old ladies whose son or daughter lives in Australia will be taken 40 miles away, be seen by a specialist, in the case of a suspected DVT or TIA have the scans straight away, then be told at 11pm. or later that they can now make there way home, no transport is available. This might be OK in London with the night buses, but not rural Dorset/Devon/Cornwall etc. where you are lucky to get 2 buses a day.

Although this is right - too many hospitals that are close to patients, but inadequately staffed and resourced - Professor Stephenson represents academic medicine rather more than he does the front-line practitioner.

As a paediatrician he has the benefit of working in an area that most people and politicians find valuable: can he speak for the "Cinderella" specialties, which include my own specialty of chronic pain management, but also elderly care, public health and a host of others, treating hundreds of thousands of patients, but out of the public eye.

Rational medicine requires rationing, but by need and not by popularity. Are any politicians willing to risk unpopularity in creating a better NHS?

I thought not: rather let the NHS go to the ideological wall, then private medicine will look that much more attractive...

... and if care in the community is so good, why is my hospital now bursting at the seams. all year round?

Dear most posters: in your rush to proclaim conspiracy and the death of the NHS, you seem to miss the fundamental point that centralisation of specialised services is not about saving money, privatising services or sacking nurses. The problem is that for some conditions there are simply not enough patients to go around. This is about clinical safety and saving lives.

In order for doctors to be good at something they need to specialise, and then they need to practice. Regularly. They can only practice on the sum total of patients available in the system. For some services (vascular, stroke, cardiac, cancer surgery, major trauma) there are not enough patients requiring specialist care for every doctor currently involved in treating them to get enough practice in. You cannot magic up more patients.

So you need to concentrate the patient population and the doctors (and specialist nurses, therapists etc) in larger units. This will ensure that surgeons undertaking cancer surgery, for example, do it often enough that they keep their skills up to date. And that patients requiring specialist nursing, or specialist dietician support for example, get it.

If it came to the crunch would you rather have the brain surgeon who operates on 50 patients a year, or 1 patient a year, operate on your brain tumour?

Of course issues of travel time are hugely important but you cannot wish this problem away, and if you ignore it then people will continue to die unnecessarily.

I'm a working GP in the north of England.Prof. Stephenson does not speak for me, or any other of the 35,000 + GPs in the country. Neither do we recognise him as "our leader".It is sheer fallacy to say that we need less beds. There is currently a 8-10 hour wait in our local hospital if we need to admit a patient, caused by it having too few, not too many beds. I have seen patients deteriorate whilst being kept at home awaiting a hospital bed. We need more hospital beds so we achieve a lower bed occupancy so sick people can be admitted when they need to b, not after someone else has been turfed out of theirs to make way.

Just an example of his flawed logic:"the GP-led local clinical commissioning groups that will gain control of £60bn of the NHS budget next April will send patients to where is best, rather than necessarily their local hospital, Stephenson added."Rubbish. I know all the local GPs who sit on the commissioning board and patients will be sent locally, partially because the idea of "best" is not valid when you have a 90 year old grandmother who just needs a few days nursing care to get back on her feet.

VAT is not liable unless the workman concerned earns over a certain sum (which quite a few years ago was £56,000), and some self-employed earn less than this. How is the person commissioning the work supposed to know? Workmen always like cash - it is entirely up to the parties if cash is paid.

Many people choose a person who is not liable for VAT because it is cheaper and is all they can afford. Otherwise, they would not get the work done. Firms always charge VAT and in any case do not want to be bothered with small jobs so their charges are very high.

What's morally wrong with paying in cash? Whether or not the 'plumber' offers a discount and puts the payment through his accounts is up to him. This is just typical, lax behaviour from rich Tories; always trying to deflect the blame onto someone poorer than themselves. It really is like the drunk son of the house blaming the kitchen boy for drinking all the wine.

Great news, but it cost him his job and probably a lot of money along the way. Will he be compensated for that? Of course not. Who in the CPS thought this case should have been prosecuted? Who in the police thought this was a case where he needed to be arrested and charged? Where was the common sense?

There is something important to be learned from this, though. People need to be very careful indeecashd about humorous comments made on public media or in a public setting. There are certain words that are completely taboo. It is not worth the risk of getting onself into so much difficulty just for the sake of a trivial comment intended to raise a smile.

There is such a thing as risk assessment. I do not want to live in a country in which we are constantly censoring our words because of the exceptioonally rare events of terror. Do you know how many people have been killed by an act of terror in the UK in the past 10 years? 61 (including the terrorists themselves). They all died on one day. And it was an appalling event and tragic for the familes and friends of those who died. But in comparison to the numbers of people who have died in car accidents, suicide, murders etc it is a very small number and the risk of dying in a terror ist act is miniscule in the extreme.

The second that someone cannot make a joke about these things - and it was clearly a joke to anyone with common sense - then the terrorists have won. They have achieved their aim by changing society by making people terrified.

the majority are behind him because we believe in freedom of speech, common sense and a sense of proporionality,; rather than turning the UK into some sort of locked down prison cell.

The Bermuda triangle of immigration

This all sounds like a problem on the legislative and organizational-managerial level. There aren't enough ground-level employees and they aren't compensated adequately so when the diligent ones find better employment they leave the agency.

I will not be surprised if the end result of this report is even less funding and even less ground-level people processing the applications, and those few left will be pressured even more.

Mr. Vaz and his committee have been kept informed of this growing problem for years. They've known about the controlled archive, its size, and the fact that every country faces great legal difficulties in repatriating refused asylum seekers.

A pity, that they take an opportunity, like labour and conservative home secretaries, to put the boot into the UKBA.

Successive governments have been attacking the civil service for years under the guise of cutting 'red tape'. They have not only greatly reduced staff numbers but have blocked promotions so that junior staff are forced to do higher-level work for lower-level pay. They have cut remuneration by attacking pension rights. What incentive does any badly-paid, badly-valued and constantly bad-mouthed BA employee have to bust a gut to clear up the mess created by his lords and masters?

When you treat your staff with little respect, that is what you will get back in return.

Please spare a thought for some of those living in the 'Bermuda triangle' who are unable to go home and have had all of their support cut off. Destitution is a massive problem for failed asylum seekers, many of whom (including women) become homeless and incredibly vulnerable. Behind every number there is a face.